Its the final “Gag Hour” for 1988 on the legendary Bob Grant show! If you never heard Bob Grant, he was one of the last middle of the road, local and national, issues oriented talk show hosts before talk radio, and WABC in particular, moved to the far right of the political spectrum.
One thing Grant did well was play a liberal at times, a conservative at others, and he managed to command a huge audience at a time when WABC sorely needed it. Grant delivered for many years.
Its interesting to note, nationally syndicated host Rush Limbaugh began his show from the WABC studios on August 1 of that year, and did the show from WABC for many years before moving the whole EIB network to Florida, but I digress.
The rules for the Gag Hour were simple: Do not say anything nice, and don’t repeat yourself. And, as usual, turn your radio down! You’ll enjoy this, as the callers are GREAT! Grant himself was enjoying every minute of it. In fact a couple of callers had him laughing so hard he was out of breath!
This is one of the only talk radio airchecks here on our site. There will be more as time goes on, as we endeavor to save the history of North American Radio Broadcasting for posterity.
Courtesy of and recorded by Contributor Ellis Feaster.
Related: Ross & Wilson, WABC New York from 1982, Jeff Christie, 1360 WIXZ McKeesport PA from 1971
Bob Grant was GREAT. He was the one who first got me seriously thinking about politics and reexamining my poorly thought-out views.
I hope there are more vintage talk radio airchecks in the future because I have found how unrepresented it is in terms of extant recordings seemingly and as one who is admittedly not too interested in music radio airchecks (though I have some from a broadcast history perspective), that can be frustrating! I would love to find some of Barry Farber at WMCA/WOR or WNBC in its “conversation station” era (other than Long John Nebel). And WABC in the 88-94 era when Rush had the local NY show only on the station and when Grant was at the top of his fame.
Bob was an entertainer! He knew that this was a SHOW, not a mission to change the world, or to get someone in, or out of office, as many talk shows seem to want to do today. Bob’s GAG hours was one of my favorite features. I had the chance to talk to Bob, about 7 or 8 years ago, when he was doing his show from our production studios, here in Orlando. I asked why he stopped doing the GAG hours, and he said they weren’t fun anymore. He said the callers had changed, and the feature had become really mean & vicious.
This is from the period from circa 1987 to early 1990 when WABC resumed using reverb on its signal for the first time since three or four months prior to its format change from Top 40–actually from Adult Contemporary (to which it switched *from* Top 40 circa fall 1980) to talk. This time, as was the case from 1/3 to halfway into ’81, the ‘verb was slight. And beginning late last year, the station once again has slight reverb on its signal. (And the last time it used ‘verb was during its 1999-2007 or 2008 Memorial Day special, “WABC Rewound”. Except that during the annual retrospective special, which featured airchecks from the station’s Top 40 and to a lesser extent AC eras, a considerable amount of reverb like it did through most of its era of the former-mentioned format was on the signal.)
I remember how Bob would sometimes slurp a drink through a straw during a GAG caller, just to display his contempt for the call. Funny as hell.